Paris--Over 2600 physicists from around the world have
signed a document supporting a high-energy electron-positron linear collider as
the next major experimental facility for frontier particle physics research,
members of the World Wide Study of Physics and Detectors for a Linear Collider
announced today.

"Such consensus on what the next research
facility should be is unprecedented," said Prof. Jim Brau, University of Oregon,
"It is a tremendous endorsement. Experimenters, theorists and accelerator
scientists, graduate students and Nobel prizewinners have all signed up to
support the linear collider." The announcement came today at an
International Conference on Linear Colliders being held in Paris this week under
the auspices of the World Wide Study.

In January 2004, a Ministerial
Statement from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also
endorsed the plan for global collaborative development of a linear collider and
noted the consensus of the scientific community on the importance of a
new-generation facility.

The linear collider will be one of the
essential tools to answer new and emerging questions about matter, energy, space
and time. In the last 30 years, physicists have achieved a profound
understanding of the fundamental particles and the physical laws that govern
matter, energy, space and time. Researchers have subjected this "Standard Model"
to countless experimental tests; and, again and again, its predictions have held
true. Now, in a development that some have compared to Copernicus's
recognition that the earth is not the center of the solar system, startling new
data have confirmed that only five percent of the universe is made of normal,
visible matter described by the Standard Model. Ninety-five percent of the
universe consists of dark matter and dark energy whose fundamental nature is a
mystery. The Standard Model's orderly and elegant view of the universe must be
incorporated into a deeper theory that can explain the new phenomena. The
result will be a revolution in particle physics as dramatic as any that have
come before.

"The linear collider will be a revolutionary research
facility that will provide the sharpest, cleanest window to the world of
elementary particles ever built, allowing scientists to probe with clarity the
most fundamental mechanisms of matter and the universe," said Nobel
laureate Masatoshi Koshiba of the University of Tokyo.

The 30-km-long
accelerator will have two main linear accelerators oriented opposite one
another, propelling head-to-head beams of electrons and their antimatter twins,
positrons, to within nearly light speed before colliding them. Working in a
real-time dialogue with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), currently being
installed in CERN in Geneva, will allow the discoveries from each accelerator to
be used to make further discoveries at the other.

The strong support
from the world physics community for the linear collider is another step forward
in the build-up toward approval of the project.

"The linear collider
will not only investigate new frontiers in physics and technology but also in
international science collaboration. This project will go ahead as a
closely coordinated international collaboration, with shared costs and shared
benefits, on a scale and scope not seen before in science," said Maury Tigner,
director of the Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics at Cornell University
and chair of the International Linear Collider Steering Group.

In 1999,
scientific panels studying the future directions for particle physics in Europe,
Asia and the United States concluded that a linear collider would be an
essential complement to the LHC at CERN. As a consequence, the International
Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) recommended pursuit of accelerator
research and development for a linear collider in the TeV energy range. In
2001-2002, the three regional organizations of the high energy physics
community--the Asian Committee for Future Accelerators (ACFA), the European
Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) and the High Energy Physics Advisory
Panel (HEPAP) from the U.S.--reached the common conclusion that the next
accelerator should be an electron-positron linear collider with an initial
energy of 500 GeV, running in parallel with LHC, and later upgradeable to higher
energies.

"I am delighted by the response from physicists worldwide,
particularly by the number of young researchers who have signed the document,"
said Prof. Francois Le Diberder, deputy director of IN2P3 in Paris.
"Participation in the linear collider gives young scientists the challenge of
taking part in the most exciting scientific quest of the 21st century."

Issued by Worldwide Study of Physics and Detectors for a Linear
Collider.